


With Jemma in the Sky With Diamonds

by bythegrace



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 14:48:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6709282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bythegrace/pseuds/bythegrace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>spoilers through current episode and speculation for the rest of the season.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Jemma in the Sky With Diamonds

In the afterglow he feels her body warm against him, and he wills himself to focus on this moment. To make it indelible in his memory. There are so few moments in life like this he thinks, where the _before_ and the _after_ matter so much less than the _now_.

She’s dozing but they both know they’ll have to move soon. Mack will be back and they have to talk about what Daisy has said.

Or rather they have to plan.

He’s glad they’ve had the chance to run through the prophecies once. He always believed in the theory of time being fixed, but having seen it firsthand it’s easier to let go of that desperate hope that maybe, just maybe the future can be changed. So he wills himself to live in the now, in this moment with their entwined hands covering his heart. Her breath warm on his neck, in this fleeting bit of peace. The cosmos may be against them, but at least they have had this.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

He talks to Lincoln first, mines him for any information Daisy may have given him. What he learns is increasingly disheartening; he feels like he’s been to the doctor and they’ve said the symptoms don’t look good. Although the signs aren’t clear, he feels the weight of the prophecy settle into his bones.

Time is ticking away and Daisy’s words echo in his ears. “Somebody on our team is going to die…and if you love her...”

He knows Daisy must be possessed, must not be in her right mind. Because she asks him ‘if he loves her’ possibly the most absurd question anyone could ask him. He’s defined his life, even before he fell in love with Jemma, by two things…science and being _her's_. Even before he wanted to kiss her, he never planned to leave Jemma’s side. She was his touchstone and from the first moment they met, she was his person, his north star.

But the more frightening aspect of Daisy’s words are the fact that they feel pointed, and in a way that his mum would describe as ‘Celtic intuition,’ he knows that Daisy is talking about him and Jemma.

Of course, he doesn’t know much more, and he can’t see the future. But the one thing he knows to be true is that Jemma Simmons Will Survive.

She doesn’t need him, not really. She loves him of course, of course she does. And she may not be as happy as she could be with him by her side, but she’ll survive. She’ll move forward and eventually she’ll be content again. Fitz thinks about her time on the blue planet, about her time at Hydra, about when she was alone at the bus without him. She pulls through against all odds, and Fitz knows that if one of them is going to die, he’ll move mountains and fight the whole damn universe to make sure that it's Jemma Simmons who survives.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

You can’t change future. It’s an essential truth that rings in his ears above the hum of the space craft May is teaching him how to launch and then fly.

He wants to scream at fate, to bang his hands against the monitor, to run as far as his legs can carry him. It isn’t fair, it isn’t. To lose his life when he finally has everything he ever wanted.

But the future is set, and if he’s going to die on this ship he might as well enjoy what time he has left.

“Do you have any questions before I teach you how to land?” May asks, and he looks up, distracted. Her eyes are softer than he’s ever seen them, and he knows her well enough to know that she’s furious at not being able to carry this burden for him. He had always feared the Cavalry, the fierce warrior. But he cares for and respects May, the woman before him who has been a mentor and a friend.

He shakes his head with a disarming smile, “We both know I don’t need to know how to land,”

Unexpectedly, May’s eyes well with tears, filling Fitz with dread- he doesn’t think he’s ready to see her cry. He covers her hand with his own for a brief moment, “I know you’d go for me if you could, but the mechanism is too complicated and we both know it.”

“Simmons could do it, but you won’t let her.” She replies, her voice suddenly severe.

“Of course not,” he scoffs, “I love her,” and he says it likes it’s the explanation for everything.

“And she just tolerates you?” May retorts quickly, “You’re taking away her agency. She should have a chance to have a choice. And at the very least you should tell her the truth about the mission.”

He looks away abashedly, “If I give her a choice, she’ll go.” Her silence goads him into responding, “I can’t lose her again, it’s selfish but…anyway, a Jemma Simmons is more important to the world at large than me. Every incredible thing I’ve ever done has been in reaction to her or for her, or in spite of her…and if I tell her…I can’t risk it.”

“She’ll never forgive you.”

“But she’ll survive,” he says finally, the mulish tilt of his chin closing the discussion.

“Let’s teach you to land anyway,” May says shooting him a look, “Humor me.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

“Let me come with you,” comes a familiar voice from the doorway.

“No,” Fitz doesn’t look up from his workbench to look at his friend.

“Turbo…you could run into anything up there…”

“I said no Mack,” he says finally turning and facing him, this man who may have just saved his life and his sanity, “You’ve got a whole life to live to you know, beautiful bilingual babies to make and all that.” He says with a smile.

“And you don’t!” Mack’s voice carries and it forces the smile off of Fitz’s face. He hands the taller man a wrench and beckons him to the workbench with the slightest nod.

“I’m going no matter what, nothing can change that,” Fitz finally says after they’ve worked in silence for quarter of an hour. His voice is resigned, but it’s laced with pure steel. “Moreover, who is going to see to every bloody thing around here if both the engineers are blown up in space? They need you too much Mack. And I need you to look after Jemma for me.”

“Turbo…” Mack’s voice is shaky, and the strength that usually seems to infuse his every pore seems to have been sapped from him, he sinks to a stool in front of him. “First Bobbi and Hunter, now you…how am I going to get along with you man?”

“Not well,” Fitz replies, placing his hand on his shoulder, “You’ll probably be stuck with some new prat who drinks wine coolers and hates video games,” he sighs and sinks to the chair next to him. And suddenly Fitz feels the enormity of the moment, how is he to say goodbye to a man who is the closest thing he’s ever had to a brother? “Besides, you’ve already saved my life once,” Fitz says to him finally, “Can’t be expectin’ you do it over and again now,”

“Fitz,…I…” Mack stumbles over his words. Fitz nods, his throat tight, he settles on a short “Ditto,” and just like that two men say everything about friendship, and brotherhood, loss and grief.

Fitz knows he’ll lose it if he embraces him so he settles on a squeeze of his shoulder before getting up and leaving the room.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

He jots down a few notes- one of friendship and forgiveness to Daisy- Lord knows she’ll need it when she comes back. One of fondness and gratitude to Bobbi and Hunter- Coulson assures him that they’ll receive it.

The note he writes to his Mum is the hardest, he’s all she has now and he all but begs her to love again, to marry, to be happy. It’s filled with all the filial fidelity and adoration he’s felt throughout the years but been too manly or stubborn to express in words. He pours out all the hopes he had for the future and he asks for her forgiveness. He ask her to take care of Jemma and to let Jemma take care of her in return. He seals it with a gasp. He wants to call, but he can’t bear the thought of saying goodbye out loud.

Perhaps that’s why he’s said nothing to Jemma, why she still believes he’ll come back. He’d begged May, Coulson and Mack to keep it from her. His only demand in return for the forfeiture of his life.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

What he’d forgotten is how well Jemma can read him. She not only anticipates his thoughts but can sense any hesitation on his part. She can feel his fear when he denies her help. The night before the mission, she’s furious at him because she knows that there is something he’s concealing from her.

They come together in a blaze of hunger and anger, love and desperation. He kisses her after, over and over, as if he can’t stop.

He knows he should be more circumspect lest she begin to understand, but he’s selfish and he wants this moment for himself. If there is an afterlife, he wants to revel in this feeling there, to live in it for eternity. The thought is so melancholy that he can’t help but laugh, even though he wants to weep.

When they make love again it’s in silence, memorizing each other with their fingers and lips.

When they finish she lies across his chest, tracing absent patterns on his chest. “It’s not a simple mission is it?”

He sighs into the silence, there isn’t any use in denial, she can read him like an open book, “No…it’s…it’s a one way trip.”

“Then I’m coming with you,” she says softly, her hand sweeping up his sides until they settle behind his neck.

“You know you’re not, you know I’d never let you,” he says into her hair.

“I don’t recall you becoming Director or my lord and master,” her voice is soft and eerily calm.

“I had intended to ask for that privilege over Christmas, although I wouldn’t ever presume to be ‘your lord and master’ I had preferred husband or partner” he says nodding towards his dresser, “My nan’s ring is there, I had a speech, it wasn’t perfect yet…”

“Stop,” she says, “Don’t say another word,” she’s clutching him tightly. “You don’t get to claim to love me more.” She sits up and the calm is gone, her eyes blazing “How dare you Fitz, you can’t decide my fate like I’m some puppet again. You nearly destroyed me the last time and I won’t, I won’t”

“Jemma,” his cry this time is anguished and when he sits up, his head is in his hands, “The only thing that’s helping me get on that ship is the knowledge that I’m keeping you off of it,” his eyes pleads with her, “Don’t take that from me, please. I need to know when I’m up there that you’re safe and happy. That you’re going to love again and have a half dozen little Simmons. That you’ll finally patent all the inventions we never got around to finishing. That you’ll see the world without someone shooting at you. I need you to live the life we could have had together.”

She’s sobbing into his chest, and she’s saying it isn’t fair. That it isn’t right.

He cries then too for the first time because it isn’t fair at all.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

He’s busy all morning finalizing the route and the calculations. When it’s finally time, she refuses to leave their room. He can hear her inside, and he pleads with her to come to the deck. To let him hold her again. She refuses, her voice broken. She says she’s not coming out, unless she’s coming with him. She says it’s the only card she can play.

“Jem, pick up the comms when I’m up there,” he pleads finally

“Why?” she asks her voice choked,

“Because I’ve never gone somewhere you haven’t. And I’m going to finally see space, and I need to share it with you. And because I want your voice to be last voice I hear and because…” it’s a desperate bid on his part to appeal to her emotion, to draw her out. It fails and although he hears her sobs, the door stays shut.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The jacket feels stiff around his shoulders and taking off in the craft is both easier and harder than he expected.

He’s suddenly loath to say goodbye to this beautiful planet. He’s a grumpy Brit with a healthy dose of skepticism and a good deal too much sarcasm. But he has treasured his time on this Earth.

His thoughts race to his Mother and to his Nan, to a childhood filled with books and warm embraces by the hearth. He thinks of Christmas puddings and the smell of incense that clung to his mother’s clothes. He suddenly misses Scotland with an ache, wishing wildly to see the heather bloom once more, to have a real Glaswegian sausage.

He thinks of MIT and the Academy, of learning everything he ever wanted to know. Of the smell of solder in his lab and the glee of a successful invention. He thinks of the ivy that grows outside the engineering building and the smell of the ground there after the rain.

He thinks of his friends, of spritely Daisy who loved him for himself, of Hunter who chased away his grief, of Bobbi, and Coulson and May. He thinks of Mack who helped him heal.

He leaves Jemma for last, like a fine Port or the chocolate orange in his Christmas stocking. He revels in his memories of her, her laugh as a girl, the freckle on her hip, her brilliance and intuition, her bravery. He rubs his thumb across his mouth at the thought of her kiss, he can hear her voice…

“Hello, Fitz,” the voice is both hesitant and heartfelt. It can’t be of course, and he realizes he’s manifested her again, but when he smells her behind him, the faint essence of industrial solvent, lavender and earl grey, he realizes she’s real.

Grief hits him like a lightning bolt to the gut, he wants to wail, to turn back. And he would if the fate of humanity didn’t rest in his hands

“I’m sorry,” she chokes out, and when he looks up, he can see the agony in her voice and in her eyes, he knows she didn’t want her final act of love to be laced with betrayal.

“Me too,” he says. And because it’s entirely too late, he stands up and kisses her and kisses her until they are both breathless.

They look at the stars and gawk at the wonderment of space while they watch their home drift away, arms around one another.

“You told me once, that you weren’t strong enough to live in a world without me,” she says finally.

“I did,” he replies softly, pressing a tender kiss upon her brow.

“Well, I’m not as strong as I look,” she says with a hitch, “I find in fact that I’m not strong at all when it comes to loving you.”

“Ha! You know that you just could bear the idea of me going to space without you,” he teases, and she lets out a chocked laugh that borders on a sob.

“Shall we agree to find each other faster in the next lifetime?” she asks pressing against him

“16 was pretty fast, for a human at least,” he replies, running his hand down the smooth velvet of her skin, entirely too cognizant of time passing quickly.

“Then lets resolve to fall in love right away,” she says burying her face into his neck and inhaling deeply, as if she is burning his smell into her memory.

“Nah,” he says with a chuckle, “You would never have whipped me into shape if you loved me, and we never would have finished a single bloody project if I knew what I know now,” he says, his delicious voice dropping a shiver down her spine. “In the next life, and all the ones after I would do it all again, minus perhaps the drowning and the alien planet. But all the rest I’d do it again if I had you by my side Jemma.”

Words seem unnecessary then. They entwine their fingers and face the stars, prepared to face their next journey, together.

**Author's Note:**

> I have to write my fears. The interweb is speculating it's our Fitz who won't make it and I have to write out my fears and feelings! But at least they're together...


End file.
